It's really just the sound of a few mates
failing to take seriously the fact they they've got an l.p. to make.
It seems VERY early eighties now, but you must remember that there
was a LOT of crap for us to clear out of the way in those days.

The Albatross.
A record, I feel, of its time. We were young(ish)
and cocky and I think it shows. I still haven't learned to sing on
this one, which bugs me too. Still, it was cheap and cheerful, and
it helped us to meet an awful lot of people.

Having exhausted the initial
stick of JB songs, I was obliged for the first time to write about my
life as it was at the time.
I think that now we had started to learn about actually creating
recordings rather than just recording the sound of a bunch of pals
fooling around.
This one I'd actually defend at length if I had to.

We were all disappointed at the way this came out. The concert was
great, but logistics prevented us from making anything much more than
a glorified bootleg. Still, live albums are best as souvenirs anyway,
so I guess some people regard it fondly. Lots of entertaining photos
to look at anyway...

This record collects together the various singles that have
been issued in England to date under the much-abused name of the
Jazz Butcher, to wit: me. I rather like having them all in one place
like this - it makes for a nice, noisey muck-it-up sort of disc that
is ideal for leisure time at home, on the beach, in you local
club.... hell, ANYWHERE!!!

The title comes from a rather noir little TV series from the early
Sixties wherein the great Herbert Lom played the extremely sexy
and not entirely unbrilliant Dr. Alexander Kordu, a psychiatrist
with the handy ability to sort out even the most appalling cases
within sixty minutes.

We were deeply confused young men when we made this record. Max, Jones
and I had all been drinking dangerously for over a year now.
Generally, we had it down in concert. In just about every other
department, however, we were coming to bits, individually and
collectively, and to me this record actually shows the morbid state
of things at the time.

The Jazz Butcher and his group are not in the business of belonging;
they are too old and too obstreperous to conform to some
attention-seeking image or commercially viable formula. Rather,
they bring their not inconsiderable talents to bear on whatever happens
to be in the way at the time. The results can only be described
as essential.

"Ever wondered what Max and I get up to away from the glamour
of the modern stage? No, probably not, but let me tell you that
there is nothing we like better that to get our teeth
into those Big Questions."

Having ended up on Creation Records, which I took as a bit of a
validation, I was keen to get as far away from all those "w" words that
had followed my group around.
The sessions were chaotic and funny.
What disappoints me is that it came out sounding so SMOOTH and tidy.
But I like Fishcotheque; I wish there more records as good as it.

Thanks for the money. We'll be spending it on weapons and drugs.
The first thing that you have to understand about this
disc is that it is not an L.P.: it is a single
and a radio session nailed together for your amusement.

Early 1989 was, indeed a strange and desperate
time after all that triumphalist Tory looting that had been
going on. We listened to a lot of hip-hop and soul music at the time,
and I think that we considered ourselves sufficiently HARD to take the
whole fucker on in an l.p.
Possibly with
a more "clued-in" producer and a bit more self-discipline we could have
come up with something like what we were looking for.

If things seemed weird back in February 1989,
when we made this baby, the Weird were going shopping on bikes.
In a farmhouse in the dead of winter,
in personal circumstances too bizarre and complex to relate, we
set about making our "commercial suicide" album.
For the first time, I felt, we had made an album that really
sounded like us.
This record does have personality.
One of my favourites, this.

For all the pain and crap from which this record was made,
the actual sessions were a gigantic and wonderful party.
This was warmly received by The Outside World,
less popular among those who counted themselves
JBC afficionados.
This IS the sound of me having fun, and getting me to do that
in those dark days of mid-1991 was no small job.

So you've got a CD player, have you? I've got a headache and
an abiding dislike of expensive food crews in dumb baseball hats.
I've been in Edward's Closet and he wasnt't in. "That JBC",
they mutter at the bus-stop, "turned left at the light a
Long Time Ago".

Karel's
two brothers, Otto and Emil, arrived in Vienna, having taken
advantage of the new freedoms introduced by the enlightened
government of Vaclav Havel, and Karel obtained in a second hand
store and ancient sequential circuits drum machine and a primitive
sampler. The Black Eg was born.

There's a clean, simple sound to a lot of this that Condition Blue detractors might
appreciate. I'm ten years older now than when
I made Bath, and right now,
after all that morbid stuff, it only
really feels like about three. There's rockin' shit and there's a big
ballad or two and some weird little pop songs and a nice family
sing-along about penguins. I hope you like it.

Yes, I believe something horrible DID happen to
the tapes somewhere.
The first time that
Richard Formby and I played this CD
we sat there laughing.
For loonie completists only, for sure, though,
if you listen through the muck, you'll see that we did our bit.

New JBC lp duly completed in secure Northampton location. 1994
live line-up stumbled through a series of tunes and such under
Butcher's direction, aided and abetted by a number of the usual
suspects;
Alex Lee on guitar,
Alex Green on saxes,
that sort of thing.

The last thing anybody expected was a new Jazz Butcher album in the
year 2000. But there is one, and it's just the sort of thing that you
hardcore JBC listeners are going to enjoy.
The record is called "Glorious and Idiotic" and it is released on 26th
January 2000 on ROIR.

Well, I'm back from America. We had a good old time of it, and by
the end of the tour we had worked 5 songs off the new record into
our live set. The title of the new waxing, incidentally, is Rotten Soul.

I recently had access to a double album, allegedly a compilation named 'Girl Go, The Best Of Creation Years' that I don't find in The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy discography.
Is it possible that I got in touch with a bootleg/unofficial release ?

Hi Pat, I feel compelled to add that the single CD "A Scandal in Bohemia/Sex & Travel" was in my player non-stop for a few years in the late 80's. A soundtrack to university.
I enjoyed your discography comments. Any comments on this one?
thanks,

Thanks Pat, One of my favorite shows of all time was the time I saw JBC [at]-remove-Rockafellers(SP?) in Houston! I don't think there was many there, but it was magic! I believe that was around the release of Big Planet, Scary Planet. Maybe you could get with the guys [at]-remove-House of Blues for a N.A. Tour? We got one here now & I would sure be there!! Listening to Condition Blue for the first time as I type this! Really nice! ;-)